Guts Gone Wild - How to heal you gut health for good with Dr. Amy Myers

Dr. Amy Myers, welcome to Living Light Metabolic Coach. It's a true honor to have you here, a pioneer in the space of functional medicine, somebody who's written several books, done hundreds of podcasts and interviews, spoken on so many stages. Uh, this is a full circle moment for me because I've admired your work from afar, and I love everything that you've done and what you've created to help not only practitioners but also the thousands of clients that you've worked with help heal their autoimmune conditions, their thyroid conditions, which as you well know, and some of our listeners might know, is most often autoimmune related. You've helped people heal their chronic gut issues, and it's amazing what you've done for us practitioners and all the people that you've served. So thank you for being here. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule and joining us today.

It's a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me.

Well, I know you graduated in 2005, so it's been 20 years in the game helping people, serving people. What I'd love to start with is just going back to that initial fire and passion, like what really lights you up to do what you've done for so long? Because, you know, 20 years is a long time to be doing something. I've been in practice for just over 20 years myself, and there's something that lights us up every day to keep doing this because it's not always easy. It's not always fun. You don't always feel seen, you don't always feel heard. Sometimes you're ridiculed even, right? Especially when you're just starting out. And, uh, there's a lot of challenges and battles that we have to overcome. So what, what lights you up every day to keep serving and being such a, you know, impactful person in people's lives?

I mean, what lights me up every day is just really, you know, I, I say this is sort of my motto, and I believe we have it trademarked now: conventional medicine failed me, and it's my mission to not have it fail you too. And so I am, um, classically, allopathically trained medical doctor, but then went on to become a functional medicine doctor. And so my second year of medical school, I was having panic attacks and losing weight and got a tremor. And they told me it was just stress of medical school. I was like, I mean, I've never had any stress like this before in my life. I need a full workup. And I was diagnosed with Graves' disease, which is hyperthyroidism, which is less common than hypothyroidism or Hashimoto's. And so back then, I didn't know of me and functional medicine was really not known at all. And so I tried some alternative things first, and then I tried medication to shut down my thyroid. And then ultimately I had to have my thyroid ablated because I knew no other solution. And I think that's really what keeps me going. I've now helped hundreds of thousands of people through my books and programs reverse their autoimmune conditions, including Graves' disease. And so that's always a bittersweet moment for me when I was working with patients or somebody writes in that they've reversed their Graves' disease because I wasn't able to do that and I don't have a thyroid. And so that's, I think, underlying what propels me every day to help people is just that I know now by having worked with tens of thousands of patients and hundreds of thousands that have read the books, that there is another way to overcome many, many chronic conditions, not just autoimmunity.

You know, a big part of— thank you for sharing that. First of all, a big part of healing is our mindset and our psychology. And, you know, when we're told there's nothing that can be done or we have to accept things the way they are, that's a tough pill to swallow, probably the toughest pill to swallow out of all of them. Is feeling powerless. I love that you give people their power back and help them understand that they're ultimately in control. What do you find is the biggest challenge in helping people with their psychology of just like believing that the healing is available to them and possible for them?

You know, I really think it depends on, on individuals. I mean, I think, when I was in practice and I had just written The Autoimmune Solution and came out, well, 10 years ago because I'm now working on an update, most people were already coming to me feeling like there was hope and that I could help them. And so, to be frank, that wasn't something that I really struggled with a lot with patients. I got really highly motivated patients and they generally did what I said because they were paying cash and they had typically flown across the country, if not across the world, to come see me. But I think where I'd like to flip it to is a patient that I had that I don't remember which African country she had come from, and she was an interpreter. And as an interpreter, you have to use the word I. And so she had fled under some pretty abusive conditions. And so she felt it her mission to help these other women who also fled to be an interpreter in a court of law. And so she would interpret and she would have to say, I this, I that, I this, as the person, and she would be reliving the trauma. And she came to see me with vitiligo, which can be a difficult autoimmune condition to— typically we can get it stopped in the tracks, but to completely reverse it is very difficult. And as she was telling me her story, I said, you know, I really think that, you know, admire what you're doing and understand why you're doing it as an interpreter. But I think the fact that you have to say 'I' is making you relive these stories and relive your own story. And I do think that this is a part of your healing and why you have vitiligo. She, of course, did not want to hear this and, you know, sort of didn't storm out, but, you know, did not take my advice to leave her job and called back maybe a year or so later and said that she had left her job and that her vitiligo had reversed. And so I think That is a case where it's different than the question that you asked, but it leads to mindset in the sense that she was taking this on by saying I and reliving other people's, her own trauma, as well as taking on other people's trauma. And so I do think that that's where self-talk and our mindset can play a big role in healing and disease.

I love that. It's really all about our identity, right? And even the people that are coming to you who are highly motivated, they've adopted the identity that it is possible for them to heal. And that in and of itself initiates the healing process, because they believe and know for certain that something can be done to help them. Thank you for sharing that. That I'm going to share that story, because that's actually quite powerful, the power of our words, you know, just the things that we repeat over and over to ourselves, even in silence, can have an impact on our health. And I don't know if you know one of my, one of my dear friends, but one of the things that she says is that oftentimes autoimmune conditions are us attacking ourselves. And in this case, she wasn't attacking herself, but she was repeating the stories of people who were, you know, in those type of, you know, tough situations. So way to, way to demonstrate that. That's, that's awesome. The other thing I wanted to ask you about is the, you know, going from the mind, the next thing I think is, you know, the gut-brain connection, which is really, really important to, for people to understand. And with autoimmune conditions, there's often the gut that's at play, if not always at play, along with the psychology. So I, I'd love to, maybe we can shift gears and talk a little bit more about gut health and how gut health changes for men and women, particularly in middle age. Have you been able to identify any patterns or any things that you see, as people get into those middle ages, forties, fifties, and sixties, that they should pay attention to when it comes to their gut health?

Well, I mean, I think, you know, particularly women, hormones are playing an enormous role in all aspects of our health, right? I mean, people sort of look at the sex hormones, the thyroid hormones, the adrenal hormones as these individual systems. Certainly what we're taught in medical school, right? Not that it's a symphony. That are all interplaying with one another. And we certainly know with women, it's one of the reasons that we believe that women are much more likely to get autoimmunity than men because we have these large shifts during puberty, having a period, pregnancy, perimenopause, menopause, and that these are times that autoimmune conditions can come out. So I don't know the specific role of the hormones on our gut microbiome, But I would imagine these, you have to assume that if they're even within a monthly cycle, right? I know that there are people who experience lots more bloating at certain times of their cycle, right? So as progesterone is more dominant or as estrogen is more dominant, these can have effects. And I can certainly speak to women to the role of hormones in gut infections, particularly Candida or yeast overgrowth. So it's very well known that high estrogen states can lead to yeast overgrowth. And so certainly after— it's a classic thing that I would see in my clinic, women that were, of course, ear infections, sinus infections, put on lots of antibiotics, maybe acne as a teenager, put on antibiotics. That can lead to Candida overgrowth, but also pregnancy. You know, you have high hormone state, or if you're on birth control pills or any type of, you know, hormonal ring or IUD that has hormones in it, if you're in this high estrogen state, that can lead to yeast overgrowth or Candida overgrowth. And then just, you know, age, right? I mean, as we age, we've been exposed to more toxins, possibly more antibiotics. We've been exposed to more Roundup. We've been exposed to more pathogens. Yeah, pathogens. I mean, all of it, right? And then as we age, we're more likely to get some low thyroid or Hashimoto's. Certainly if we have low thyroid, then we're going to slow down our gut motility. That can lead to SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. So I think that the connections are You know, there's so many. Yes. There's so many that it's hard to really, you know, identify or single out, you know, one or two things that could be, you know, causing this as we, as we age.

Yeah. I think in the best way to sum it up, it's just life, right? As, as we move on, things change as our environment changes, perhaps our diet changes, our exposure to, you know, toxins or even medications. It's a constant, it's a system in constant flux. But with the hormonal changes overriding that for both men and women as they go through middle age, it, it just adds more fuel to that fire, so to speak. And, and things can really start to shift. I'm curious if there's, aside from, you know, obviously subjective, what are some objective ways that people can check in with their gut? Do you recommend testing? Do, is there particular tests that you recommend? I'm, I'm curious on, somebody, you know, if somebody's listening to this and they're interested about their gut health, like, where is a great place for them to start?

So, well, um, you'll be the first to know here that in January or February, we'll be starting an online community. I'll be back, you know, hosting in the community, and we will be offering lab testing. You know, as a medical doctor, you know, I really do like lab testing, and I do believe, um, gut testing has really improved over the years. And I would always say to people when they were calling around after I had retired clinically and they were looking for a functional medicine doctor, the first question you should ask is what if they could only run one functional medicine test, what would it be? And if they said heavy metal test or toxin test, I'd like tell them to run, it should be a gut test because particularly if you're dealing with autoimmunity, 70 to 90% of our immune system sitting in our gut. And, you know, now we're even knowing more and more about the gut microbiome and how important it is. And, and, you know, in all facets of life, from mental health to obesity to metabolic health to autoimmunity and immune health, even cancer. So I do believe in stool testing and not, you know, functional medicine stool testing, not not the stool testing that you're going to get at Quest or somewhere like that. But because, you know, I retired clinically and so many, you know, I was no longer seeing patients, and in all of my books— and we do, I don't have the link for you here, but I'll get it for you— where they can go to my website and take a test, or if they own a copy of any of my books, or they can pick up a copy of any of my books, and I have tests in there to see, do you have the potential to have yeast overgrowth? Do you have the potential to have parasites? Do you have the potential to have SIBO? And those tests are pretty spot on. And it's what we offer on my website. And then, of course, a protocol or supplement protocol of how to reverse these conditions because they are so important and so vast. And so many people have both of these. I mean, it was really rare that I saw— of course, I was dealing with people with autoimmunity, and after you've written a few books, you're dealing with people with a lot of different autoimmune conditions. I don't think I really ever saw anybody that didn't have some sort of, you know, gut infection. And certainly if you were dealing with Crohn's, ulcerative colitis, celiac, an actual autoimmune disease of your gut, then you are more likely to have even several of these gut infections.

Yeah, we're seeing, you know, more and more of that. And I don't know if it's just exposures or if it's a decrease in resilience. I feel like people are a lot under a lot more stress than they've ever been from every angle, whether it's the visible stresses in their lives or the invisible stresses like non-native EMF or things that are floating around in the air. Like, who knows what they're spraying us with these days? Like, you just, it's like you don't know what to believe anymore, right?

It's, oh my God. I'm going to deviate here, but recently it snowed for the first time, a couple, like about 2 weeks ago. And I saw these things on Instagram where people were picking up snow and then putting a lighter to it to see if it would drip and it wouldn't drip. And then it turned black and smelled like plastic. And I saw it a few times. So I thought, you know what, I'm going to pick up snow and I'm going to go try this. And of course, I didn't video it to put it on Instagram. I get a little lazy sometimes. I'm not that into social media. But anyway, That is exactly what happened to the snow here at my house. I did it myself. And I'm currently in New Mexico. And if you go to the government's website, I mean, they have authorized weather modification here. And you can see, like, today is not one of the days they do it. It's a perfectly blue sky. And then it's like Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and sometimes Sunday. Then you just see the stripes coming. Hmm.

We've got a bunch of snow here in Toronto. I'm gonna, I'm going to see.

Go out and try it. See if, but you're in Canada. I don't know, you know, what your weather modification is happening.

Well, you know, the wind blows everywhere. We share the air, right? Like it's not. That's true. It's not like it just stays in one spot with the wind stream. So I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna try that out.

Let me know.

There's times where I see it snow and I'll see like this oily film as the water is melting. And I'm like, is my— does my car have an oil leak? And it's— it doesn't, but there's something in the snow that's melting that, you know, is kind of running, running back into the stream.

So, well, I mean, there is the, um, I've forgotten the name of it. Uh, I was going to say Inconvenient Truth, but I think that that's Al Gore's, um, movie. There's a documentary about weather modification on, uh, on Amazon Prime. I mean, this is one of those things that I totally was like, these people are nuts. I don't know what they're talking about. And in about the last 12 months, I've been like, let me investigate this a little bit more.

And it seems to be pretty, yeah, I mean, it's one of those things that you, you kind of know it's happening. You don't want to believe it's happening. You don't know what to do about it. Right. I mean, we filter, we have like several filters filtering the air that we're breathing, but we like to have the windows open in the summer and get fresh air blowing through, but then you just don't know what's coming in. And so back to our point, right? There's these invisible forces at play that our great-grandparents certainly didn't have to deal with and our ancestors have never had to deal with.

Yeah, I don't even think our parents are really dealing with this. I mean, they were saying that Disney paid someone, I don't know, some enormous amount, $20 million or something to go back into old Disney movies and add white stripes into the sky. So our parents weren't even dealing. I mean, this, you know, I remember looking at the clouds as a child, you know, and seeing, oh, look at the unicorn in the clouds, and look at the, you know, and in this film, you know, they're saying there's certain places the sky is just never blue anymore, but we don't see these big billowy clouds anymore. They're these, you know, haziness. And yeah, so, but yeah, I mean, back in the day, I mean, I even feel like, you know, 20 years ago when I first started, you know, just getting people on an organic diet, you know, drinking some filtered water, filtering your air, um, you know, getting off some gluten and some dairy and like heal your gut and you're good. And, and now it's, it's, um, it's really moved to, you know, you've got to be detoxing every day and, and, you know, doing your best to, you know, avoid all of this because we're getting hit from everywhere. And I'm not trying to scare people, it's just it is becoming more difficult even in functional medicine. You know, what was working 20 years ago? I mean, I remember, you know, Mark Hyman was a mentor to me and I had been an ER doctor. And so not only was I going into something totally different, I was going to have patients follow up with me, which was, you know, kind of a scary thought after the ER. Like, you hope to never see the patient again in a good way. And, and he just said, oh, you know, just get them on an elimination diet and heal their gut. And 80% of them are going to get better. And it was like, oh my God, it was like magic. These people coming in with migraines for 20 years and I get them off gluten and dairy and get rid of some Candida and they think I have hung the moon, right? And they're telling everybody to come see me. And then even by the end of my practice, it was getting just so much more complicated with Lyme and mold. And now you know, we have COVID and, you know, COVID vaccines in the mix and it's just the world is getting more complicated for people.

Yeah. It's almost like every time we invent a new solution to solve perhaps a different problem, we create a new one and our body keeps the score, right? We're just a microcosm of the macrocosm. So as you know, we, we continue down this path. I don't know what it looks like. I think like you know, we're heading in this AI era where we're hoping that the robots and the computers can solve all of our health issues that we are causing, right? By our own either neglect or ego or greed. I don't know what labels to put on it, but it's definitely not an intelligent behavior by supposedly the most intelligent life force on the planet or in the universe until we know better. But we know it's just scary that, you know, what's, what's happening. And, you know, if somebody wants to be healthy, they have to, they have to be an active participant in that process. They have to live with awareness. They have to eat, breathe, sleep, like everything they have to do with, you know, heightened level of awareness, not fear, but just awareness.

And it's time-consuming and it's expensive. I mean, it's, you know, it, it is. I mean, again, I'm not trying to be the Debbie Downer because I feel like, you know, in all of my books, I offer information for people to realize it's something they need to take serious, but then I'm really known for offering the solutions. And so we can spend some time talking about solutions, but it can become a full-time job just to stay healthy and to keep your family healthy.

Yeah. And I know we're trying to change that, right? We're trying to make things—

Yes. And I do think that things, for as bad as certain things are getting, 20 years ago, people didn't know about functional medicine. I mean, when I started out, I had to explain what is functional medicine. Now I can tell people, oh yeah, I'm a functional medicine doctor, and 90% of the time they're like, oh cool, you know. But 15 years ago, certainly 20 years ago, I would say that and people go, well, what is that? Now occasionally people still do say, what is that? But, and I think that we are seeing, you know, I mean, there are states that are outlawing, you know, weather modification. There, you know, are states that are making vaccines less mandatory, you know. And so I do think that there is some change coming for sure.

And until then, we do our best, right? Modify whatever we can, you know, as those forces modify what they're trying to modify.

Mm-hmm.

You know, so stress being at an all-time high and stress directly having a, a correlation to gut health, and it can even create a shift in the microbiome as, as I'm sure you're well aware. What are some ways that people can, can handle stress a little bit better? Do you have any insights that you can, that you can offer us? Maybe some tools that you've used personally that help you deal with the world that we live in? And obviously you run a business and, uh, you travel and all the other things. What are ways that you manage and address personal stress?

Yeah, so I talk about it in The Autoimmune Solution about relieving stress because, you know, I just think that there's a certain amount that we, you know, can't control, whether it's environmental stressors that we can't control. So, you know, I just kind of go down them in groups in terms of in my home, I do have a well, and then we have a big water filter. We have HEPA filters. We actually have HRVs, which brings in fresh air and then filters it. So after losing everything to mold 3 times, I built a very sophisticated house in Santa Fe. So I do these things so that when I go out, into the world. I mean, I do now try to always bring my own water with me because I feel like that is just something that I can do. I have very clean water, and that, that's just a thing that we do. I mean, I, you know, even for my daughter going into a restaurant, we just drink our own water. So anyway, but my point is, I, I try to buy all organic for my house, you know, all non-toxic body products, you know, just everything filtered, everything in the house, so that when I go out, I do the— make the best choices that I can, but I'm not living in that fear. You know, I make my child's lunch every day. She's not eating the school lunch or whatever, and so we make those choices. Um, in terms of, you know, I'm not always great about this, but I, you know, just try to turn off my phone during the day because you're just accessible all the time. And so I just try to literally put it on airplane mode so that I'm not being blown up all the time on my phone. And meditation. I first started with Transcendental Meditation after college. My mother saw how stressed I was and sent me off to do that. And more recently, I started doing more Joe Dispenza type meditations. And then something that I've been pretty open about recently is then we can have these, as you said, the body keeps the score, right? Like, I just have this stuff in us that's been stressful, old childhood stuff, old relationship stuff, whatever it is. And so I had what I thought was pretty significant health issue last year that turned out to not be one. But I thought, you know, I know medically how to deal with this, but mentally, I don't know if I'm right, you know, the whole mindset thing. So I went to Joe Dispenza and then I actually tried a medicine journey for the lack of a better word. It was not ayahuasca. In fact, they don't tell you what it is, but something probably along the lines of psilocybin, ketamine, or something like that. And even though I poo-pooed these things and all this kind of stuff, it really was the most amount of healing in the shortest amount of time. And now I've done it 3 times, so it's really been amazing. And I'm not an expert to discuss this. I'm happy to talk more about it. And I know that there's all kinds of things you can do. This is actually called clarogenic medicine, not hallucinogenic, where you just get really clear with your soul and you actually speak out loud and they record it, and then you work with the coach to deal with a lot of the things that come up, but I felt like I was able to resolve a lot of things that I hadn't been able to resolve before, even having gone through counseling and all kinds of stuff. And so I've found that to be a pretty powerful tool, and that's really enhanced my meditations, my Joe Dispenza meditations as well. I feel like I can kind of get into that zone a bit easier. And that's really helpful to both relax, resolve things, just come out with a better perspective. I think anything to have those just quiet time. And I'm a person, I try to kill a lot of birds with one stone. Like I'll get in my hyperbarics and meditate, or I'll get on my PMF mat and meditate. Or, I mean, I try to there are only so many hours in a day. And so even when I'm trying to relax, I'm stacking my relaxation modalities.

You know, I don't know if you knew this or not, but I did ayahuasca earlier this year.

Oh, no.

And it was, you know, a very profound experience for myself. And when I came back, I came— I came back with like a lot of clarity and messages. So I'm curious if there's any messages that you came back with that would be in service of our listeners?

I mean, I think it's just back to that, you know, there is hope. And there's, you know, if you go to a Joe Dispenza retreat or do, you know, I can't speak to ayahuasca, but if you went, you know, and did what I did, there are many, many stories of healing. In fact, in my all of my journeys, you know, I kept getting this lab test that said I had a problem, but my soul was like, everything is fine. And, you know, so, um, yeah, I mean, and for me personally, you know, I came out with a very specific checklist of like things I have to do in the functional realm. Like I have to update the autoimmune solution. The world has changed so much in the last 10 years. And then, you know, there's, there's something else for me that, you know, involves helping people in, in a very different way than I've helped them in a functional medicine way. So I don't know what that is, but, you know, it's like it's not over for me yet. Not that I thought it was over, but I mean, you know, there's, there's something more for me in terms of healing. But it was— came to me in every session that I was, which I have always known, but I was put on this earth to help heal humanity. Like, that is my purpose in life for sure. And I thought, oh, I've done enough of that. I've written these books, helped hundreds of thousands of people. That's enough. But apparently, perhaps it's not over. But I don't know where I'm going next.

Maybe it's just the beginning, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. The visual that's coming up for me lately over the last couple of days, because I feel like a lot of people are going through this type of work and we feel like, you know, at one point perhaps we're on the top of the top of a mountain peak. And then when we come, when we go through challenges, it's like going into the valley. And, you know, the valley is a place where we have infinite possibilities because now we can choose the mountain we're going to climb next. And it's a place to rest and a place to recover and a place to get clarity and then choose that next route that you're going to go on. So I'm excited to see where, where this, you know, mountaintop is and where it takes you and the impact that you're going to have on people. I know it's going to be— you've already had a big impact, but as you said, the world has changed so much. So now you can have an even bigger impact because more people are ready to, you know, to hear this message they're looking for. This message, as opposed to before we were just trying to help whoever wanted the help and whoever needed it. But now people are actively seeking out this type of work. So definitely, you know, your time— the message and the time has come.

Yeah. And I feel like, you know, I was on the forefront with functional medicine, and, you know, I'm by no means going to say that that's passé now, but I feel like I might be on the forefront of something else again, you know, um, that now there are more functional medicine practitioners and it's more accessible to people. And so now it might be time for me to, you know, go in a different, perhaps less tangible route. I don't know.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. It, uh, you know, there's so many ways, like, you know, my journey as well, um, you know, I've done a variety of different things over time, and then you're like, oh, like what's next? Like how do we, how do we kick this ball a little bit further and where do we take it and what do we call it too, right? Sometimes the places we want to go to don't have a name yet or don't exist in the public vernacular, right? Like, you know, at one point functional medicine was an obscure term and now it's becoming a little bit more mainstream. So it'll be interesting to see, you know, what you name it, where you take it and, and who you help with it. You know, we, we talked about the psychology, we talked about gut, we talked about stress, and one of the things that, that all kind of can eventually lead to, or it's hard to know if what came first, the chicken or the egg, but eventually it leads back to, you know, something like leaky gut syndrome. And I know that's a big, you know, cornerstone in the development of autoimmune conditions. So perhaps you can talk us through what are some of the early signs and symptoms of leaky gut? Who should, you know, consider getting evaluated or tested for leaky gut. And then perhaps we can even talk about solutions because I would assume that, you know, if I was testing people, at least the people that come into our practice, it's rare to find somebody who doesn't have leaky gut.

Mm-hmm.

So sometimes it might even be just easier to assume you have it and start working on it, or I'd love your thoughts on that too.

Yeah. So I mean, in terms of a symptom of leaky gut, You know, it's not like, oh, I have gas, therefore you mean you have leaky gut. It's more looking at your history. Do you have a history of eating a lot of, um, uh, you know, gluten? Do you have a history of eating a lot of grains that aren't organic, so they have Roundup on it? Do you have a history of antibiotic use? Do you have a history of C-section? Do you now have a diagnosis of an autoimmune condition cancer, metabolic syndrome, all of these things can be a sign of leaky gut. In fact, I wrote an article a gazillion years ago, 10 Signs You Have a Leaky Gut, and very little of them are actually digestive symptoms. I mean, most people did not come into my clinic having digestive symptoms. I mean, sometimes people would have gas and people would have bloating, some people would have constipation or diarrhea, but there's not like a one symptom that says this is is what you have leaky gut. It's more what's your history and what are your now diagnosis. Unexplained rashes, unexplained hives, these things can all be, you know, a lot of having a lot of food sensitivities. A lot of times this is just you're eating the food a lot and you have leaky gut and you don't actually, you know, once you heal your gut and you get off these foods for a little bit, you have no problem going back to them. It's not a true food sensitivity, it's more leaky gut. So, you know, I think just to round it out, having kind of any chronic health condition can be a sign that you have leaky gut. I mean, it's back from, you know, when I started out over 20 years ago, Dr. Alessio Fasano, who, you know, his team actually discovered zonulin, the molecule that gets released in leaky gut. And it was on the COVID of Scientific America that you had to have, you know, some genetic predisposition, although we now find people who have all kinds of diseases that don't have genes for them. But, you know, and then some, you know, triggers such as you got COVID, you got a parasite when you traveled abroad, you got Candida, you got something, and then leaky gut. And you had to have these three things to, you know, to then get an autoimmune condition. And now even, you know, it's the thought process, but, you know, behind cancer as well. And one could probably argue Alzheimer's and and all kinds of brain dementia and things like that as well. So in terms of leaky gut, I can walk through— I mean, I use a typical 4-hour program, which is to remove whatever these triggers are. If it's certain toxic and inflammatory foods, if you've got Candida, SIBO, parasites, get these things out. So you want to remove you know, all the bad stuff. Then you want to replace anything that's missing. Most people, you know, are lacking hydrochloric acid to break down proteins. They might be missing digestive enzymes, or they might just not be making these things because of the diet they've been eating, and they need, you know, some boost temporarily. A bile salt if they don't have a gallbladder, it's sluggish. And then, you know, you were— so you're replacing anything that's missing, you're reinoculating with good bacteria. I think the, the caveat to that is if you are dealing with SIBO, you don't want to be adding in a lactobacillus-based probiotic. You want to be adding in a soil-based probiotic because SIBO can be— too much of a good thing is a bad thing. So you have maybe too much lactobacillus already, so you don't want to add that in. And then, um, you know, you want to repair the gut. And so I have a product, Leaky Gut Revive, which one of my top-selling products that repairs. But the ingredients of that are, you know, L-glutamine, um, high-dose L-glutamine, aloe vera, um, deglycerated licorice, marshmallow root, all the things to, to help your, your gut make more mucus and really, you know, coat that barrier and seal those gaps back up.

And one thing that you said is it tastes delicious.

Oh yeah. Well, we have plain that you can add to anything that has no taste, or we have strawberry lemonade, which is a staple in our house. My daughter, if she has a stomachache or anything, will say, mommy, can I have Leaky Gut Revive? And I've just served it at— I've served it at parties where if you might be drinking some alcohol, you can rip apart your gut with the alcohol and seal it up with the Leaky Gut Revive. I've served it at my daughter's birthday parties. Yep, it's delicious. It tastes just like, like strawberry lemonade. You don't realize that you're drinking something that's helping you heal your gut.

I'm, I'm very curious and I'm excited to try it myself because I've, I've used other, you know, gut barrier products and it's a bit of a stretch. Yeah, they taste, they taste like they sound.

Yes.

Are there any particular tests that you recommend? I know there's a variety of tests now for leaky gut, different labs that do it. Is there, uh, you know, a test that you swear by that is a great place for people, a great test for people to ask for?

You know, I think that there's pros and cons to doing leaky gut testing. I definitely saw those tests positive in my clinic, but there were people that, I mean, they had to have leaky gut. I mean, just looking at what they were coming in with, and the test wouldn't be positive. And so I'm a little less of a fan of the leaky gut test than I am of doing, um, you know, a comprehensive stool test. Because in a comprehensive stool test, you're gonna look at their enzymes and ability to digest. You're gonna look and see if there are any opportunistic infections. You're gonna see if there are any parasites, like there's a wealth of information that you can get out of that. And I just take the approach that if you've come in, you've got an autoimmune condition, you've got cancer, you've got one of these chronic conditions, you got leaky gut, or you're somewhere on the spectrum. I mean, I write about it in The Autoimmune Solution, the autoimmune spectrum. I mean, there's probably a leaky gut spectrum too. As I'm saying this for the first time, I think I'll add that to my new book. But there's probably a spectrum of leaky gut as well. And, you know, there's not going to be harm in treating it or treating you as if you have leaky gut, right? I mean, all of these nutrients that we'll be giving you to help heal your gut, you know, certainly if we're doing this for 30, 60, 90 days, it's just, you know, I always feel like I do a test to know what I don't already know. Right. And, or if a person, which I am a scientist, I like to track things, but I just saw so many times that people, their test wasn't positive, but they had all these symptoms and I just found it like impossible. And then I didn't want to think that they didn't have leaky gut and then I didn't want the patient to not be compliant. So the short answer is I'm not a huge fan of those tests. Certainly, you know, if somebody wants to know and track, or, you know, if they come in with a test and it's already that they have leaky gut, and then you want to go through a program to heal and then retest to prove that it's gone, that's always beneficial. But, um, you know, if somebody's coming in with enough symptoms, I've just treated everybody in my clinic as if they had leaky gut and we put them on a protocol because most everybody, as I stated before, was coming in with Candida or SIBO or parasites or something. So it was already, you know, gonna go through this 4-hour program to heal their gut as it was. And so I would, you know, save them that money and use that money towards some other test like a comprehensive stool test where I couldn't necessarily guess, you know, at their digestive enzyme levels and things like that.

Yeah, we, you know, we, when we do a stool test, it becomes much more clear as to what the root cause of the permeability might be, or it becomes clear to us what we could have been missing, right? If we, cuz we can't just ask the body, you know, or ask the patient what their needs are, we have to really do that investigation. So I, I definitely agree that a stool test is a very great, a, a really comprehensive and insightful place to start for people because it gives you as a clinician as well, it gives you and them the action plan to put into place to correct the imbalance. Imbalances.

Exactly. And there are so many indicators, you know, if you're— if, you know, all of your bacteria is out of whack, I mean, you know, these things tell me that you probably have leaky gut. And then, you know, if you're doing an organic acids test and you're getting urine, I mean, there's, there's just a lot of information that you can get from these tests and clues that will tell you between that and their symptoms that they have leaky gut.

And how long would it take for somebody to course correct if they have leaky gut?

Yeah, so I think it just depends on what we're dealing with. If they just have Candida, you know, it could be 30, 60 days. If they have Candida and SIBO, each of those protocols are 30 days apiece. So it really just, you know, kind of depends on what we're dealing with. But we know within 24 to 48 hours of changing your diet, your microbiome changes. So, you know, the change in these gut cells are turning over every 24, 48 And then you add in a product like Leaky Gut Revive that helps even speed up that process. It can be quick. It can be very quick. It's just a matter of if you have actual infections that you need to deal with. It can be a little quicker if you are taking prescription medications such as Diflucan or Xifaxan for SIBO or something like that. You know, a lot of— when I was practicing, a lot of times those things were not covered or they were extremely expensive, which is why I designed the supplement line, because I needed to have something to give my patients that, you know, didn't cost them thousands of dollars. And so, but these pro— but, you know, because they're natural agents and supplements they're taking, you know, can take up to 30 days to, to treat those things. And then, you know, of course, sometimes you get some people who are you treat their SIBO and it comes right back, you know, I mean, SIBO can be, you know, a bugger. So the main thing is like not going back to the lifestyle that got you in this boat in the first place. But, you know, again, it just, I think that you can heal the gut pretty quickly, 30, 60, 90 days generally tops, you know, and then, then most people are starting to reverse their autoimmune conditions, you know, within that time period as well.

It's amazing how, how fast the body can recover and regenerate, right? When we give it what it needs, it's, it's always in this state of, you know, replacing itself, which is kind of cool and, and a gift and a curse at the same time because we perhaps can easily take it for granted. But if somebody's on the mend and they're trying to heal, then we want to lean into that and just have that, just having that awareness that, hey, every, every couple days your gut lining is replenishing and replacing itself. That gives people hope because even though they've had something for years, it doesn't have to take years for them to start, you know, feeling better. The body is waiting for them to do the right thing.

I mean, I think your body wants to be in a healthy, healed state, right? I mean, that's its natural equilibrium is to go there. And so yeah, you just gotta pull out the triggers that are doing what it's doing and add in the good stuff.

Yeah, great point. Speaking of triggers, I know a big trigger can be a lack of recovery and rest. So stress kind of being in the same vein, but perhaps a different end of the spectrum. Tell me about sleep and how sleep affects autoimmunity.

Well, I mean, sleep is so important. And as you get into menopause, it becomes even more important because it gets worse. I was always a very good sleeper, so, you know, I have all kinds of, you know, even gadgets there, you know, helping me, helping me sleep. But I think, you know, the most important thing about sleep is it's where we detox. It's where we do most of our detoxification, and it's where we do most of our healing. And so if you're not getting, you know, there's the amount of time you're in bed, and then there's the actual good quality sleep, then you're missing these really important stages that need to happen every night, right? We need to detox, we need to repair, as you said. And I wear an Oura ring. I mean, it's pretty clear when I don't get a good night's sleep that all my numbers are not great the next day. And so I think more and more people, because so many people are talking about it or realizing how important sleep is now. But, but, you know, back when I started, it really was low on the totem pole. You know, I mean, now you see all kinds of people wearing amber glasses out at night. And, you know, I have these little black stickers when I go into a hotel room. I mean, they're like covering up all the little blue lights everywhere. I mean, in fact, I'll tell you this story. I had— we moved into a house and our smoke detectors kept tripping. And of course, you know, after they've tripped like the millionth time, um, you know, you're kind of immune to it. But also it's waking you up in the middle of the night because these things never trip at 11 o'clock in the day, right? You know, it's always 2 AM or something and you're freaking out. Anyways, so I had my smoke detector in the ceiling and I had a little— it had one little green light and I had a little black piece of tape over it. And, you know, I had some electrician come, he said these are you know, bad. They're known to trip and do all this stuff. You need to get this brand. So he goes and like changes all of them in the house, and I'm not even like cluing into it. And then I get in my bed that night and it's like the entire thing was illuminated like a nightlight. I mean, it wasn't just this one little dot, and I couldn't cover it up because then smoke couldn't get to it. I ultimately, because I was getting such bad sleep because I'm used to it being pitch black in my room I had to come and he's like, well, you know, this is the bad kind. I said, you have to change it out. Like, I feel like I'm a child with a nightlight on. Like, I am used to pitch black. I can't. And now there are all these studies coming out, you know, that even just sleeping with an eye mask is not enough because of course we have light receptors all through our skin and everywhere. And so you really need the room pitch black or else you know, if you have any part of your body exposed, it's going to be picking up these, you know, the lights. And we could go on and on about lights and LED and blue light and not getting enough red light. But it's, that's a whole nother thing. You know, I have incandescent light bulbs in all of my lamps. I don't, I mean, of course, all I could get in my house was LED lights. But luckily, I have enough windows. That I rarely have to turn on a light. And then at night I have incandescent light bulbs that are amber in all of my lamps.

I love that. You know, I actually, you can probably tell my face is glowing red a little bit if you're watching the video. I actually have an infrared lamp on when I'm sitting at my desk. So not only does it provide warmth, especially in these cold winter months, but I'm getting the red and infrared light that isn't always available to us with traditional indoor lighting. And in the evening we turn off the overhead lights, our house turns completely red. I wonder what my neighbors think about us, but hopefully they get curious enough to, to ask us and then change what they're doing in the evening. So I totally get it. And, and one thing I just, I was having this conversation with a client yesterday and he's like, well, what do you think of those like weird red glasses that people wear? I'm like, well, you can't have all the lights on in the house and the TV blaring and be on your screen and just cover your eyes. 'Cause as you said, our skin has photoreceptors as well. It's picking up messaging from your environment too. So you've gotta really turn off the screens or, you know, wear clothing that covers your body and also cover your eyes as well. So it's like these little things that we can do that can have a huge positive impact on our health, don't really cost us anything, right, to make these changes. And they're usually one-time changes that we need to make. But it's again, going back to what we said earlier, living with awareness so that, you know, every passing minute is, you know, healing you or supporting your healing as opposed to every passing minute causing decay and degradation. And, and lighting I think is, is a huge overlooked source of people's health issues. They don't, necessarily realize how important not just protecting themselves from toxic indoor lighting, but more importantly, getting the right type of lighting that they need during the day, which is being outdoors. And, you know, we've planted ourselves indoors, however, we belong outdoors. I, I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about that cuz I know that connecting with nature is important. I know that obviously getting vitamin D is important, getting quote unquote fresh air, if we wanna still call it that, is important. Maybe talk about that and, and the role that that plays with, with autoimmunity and chronic illness.

Yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of studies just, you know, getting out into nature. I mean, of course, you know, all these things that seemed so woo-woo way back when, earthing, you know, going out, you know, putting your feet, you know, now we have PMF mats, we have earthing shoes, you know, they're supposed to connect you. But, you know, there are a lot of studies just, you know, on health and being out in nature. I mean, it is one of the reasons that we chose to come to New Mexico. You know, I'm here, I'm on a number of acres versus in Austin, you know, our house is right next to another house. And, you know, even if I'm not able to go out into nature and have a hike every single day, I'm at least, you know, can go out in my yard I have a huge garden, you know, surrounded by trees. Most days, the, you know, the air is— the sky is blue. So, yeah, I mean, these things are really important in terms of— I mean, I don't have a specific statistic for you revolving around autoimmunity. I think it just gets back to health in general, right? You know, connecting eating with the seasons, getting up with the sun, going to bed with the sun or the moon, and being out in nature instead of in cement boxes with LED lights and really just getting so out of sync. Again, I don't have something. Maybe I'll see if there is any research on with autoimmunity specifically. But, you know, I don't have a statistic right now to tell you about it and autoimmunity. I think we can just know, you know, when I go on a walk in a neighborhood versus with the dogs versus, you know, out in nature, it's just totally different. I mean, I love that my child, you know, will get excited when she sees the moon rising, you know, over the things, or she'll make a comment about like, look at how the lighting is, or mom comes see the sunset. I mean, these are things that I don't think in a city a lot of people are noticing just because they're busy with their lives to light pollution and they can't see certain things, right? Or buildings are blocking them or whatnot. But it brings me joy that my daughter notices things. Of course, she goes out and plays in the dirt and gets bugs, and we have bunnies in the yard and coyotes that come by and deer. And the day that it snowed, we just followed tracks of different animals and tried to, you know, figure out what animals they were. And, you know, then you see like these, like coyote or bobcat, you know, going up to the bunny things. And I actually called her, you know, last night. I was like, oh my God, I saw— because we had these 3 bunnies living with us, and then these coyotes came, and then the snow, and you saw the footprints. But I saw all 3 bunnies last night. I was like, all 3 bunnies are alive.

To be a kid, right? But to also be a human, I think that's the thing is we've removed ourselves from our native environments, our native scenery, you know, being in the dirt, like all those things were just, they're foreign to us now, or maybe not in your case, but for most people there, it's foreign to them as a concept. And it's almost like going backwards in terms from an evolutionary perspective, but it's really the way forward. To go back to this ancient wisdom and this awareness that we are part of this planet and to separate us from it is one of the biggest mistakes that we could make. Yeah, we've covered a lot of ground today. I really appreciate this conversation and I know on the shelf behind you, you've got some of the products that you carry and that you've developed over the years with your experience. Maybe you can speak to that a little bit and I love to, you know, make sure people are, are aware of where they can learn more and grab them. And, you know, we, we are gonna be carrying this product line in our store so we can also help people find solutions to their, you know, health challenges that they don't have to have if they don't want to.

Yeah. So, you know, it all started way back when, you know, when I wrote The Autoimmune Solution. Back in 2013, I was writing it. I was using other pharmaceutical-grade supplements and putting my label on it, and then that became such a success that things were going out of stock. And so I thought, well, this, you know, really can't be that hard, and this can also be my opportunity of, you know, instead of taking 3 different supplements, I can combine it into a supplement that I I wish I had had, you know, when I was doing this, and I was still practicing at that time. So that was really the precipitous, and then I very quickly wrote The Thyroid Connection, and some of the feedback that I got from The Autoimmune Solution was just there were so many supplements. And so I thought, you know, I'm going to create a supplement that is really there to help people reverse thyroid conditions or ward off, you know, having a thyroid issue. And so nothing ambitious like creating a multivitamin as your first supplement that you decide to create. It is 6 pills, and if it had had everything I wanted, it would have been 10, but I thought people are not going to do that. So, back to the supplement line. I mean, it's really based on my many, many years working as a functional medicine doctor, working with thousands of patients all around the world, and knowing what worked, what didn't work, because I was following people's labs. And so yeah, I created my own, you know, everything that we have now has been designed by me. It's third-party tested. It's all gluten-free, dairy-free, top allergen, you know, free. I think I said third-party tested and, you know, bioavailable forms such as, you know, pre-methylated B vitamins, things like that. We have a colostrum that is, well, it's, it's really immunoglobulins, bovine immunoglobulins that come from serum, whereas most colostrum comes from the first milking of a cow, and so many of my patients at least have dairy issue, even those small amounts was not going to work. And so I love that we have this serum. It's called Immune IG. And yeah, so I mean, I have a lot of protocols which I know you guys are interested in starting to carry, but these are all based on my working with thousands of patients. And now they've been in my books and hundreds of thousands of people have reversed their SIBO, their Candida, their autoimmunity, their leaky gut from following these protocols. And so these are all just based off of my, my work as a clinician. You know, I think there's so few people— I mean, I'm— I don't want to say that I'm the only one, but certainly when I started, I was— to have been, you know, a female, an MD, a clinician, and then to create create my own product line, you know, after working with people, at least, you know, when I started, was a very rare thing. And so I think that's what people are getting when they're getting my supplements is, you know, really based on real-life clinical experience.

Yeah, that's really important. You know, sometimes when I look at products and I look at the pack, the bundles that they put together, I'm like, why did they put this all into one product? Because you would always wanna use them together. So it sounds like you've done that. And, and not only, I appreciate the simplicity of that. Of course, it's not simple to do these things, but the simplicity for the user experience, the clinician experience as well. And then of course, it's gonna help, you know, cut down unnecessary costs because the more we can combine products together, it, it makes the product line more accessible to people, which I appreciate as well because I think we've all noticed that the cost of supplements are ever inching up and increasing, and it's pretty easy to get to a dollar amount that can leave a lot of people out of their healing opportunity.

So, well, and the other thing that's happening is, you know, a lot of companies are starting supplement companies and then putting in ingredients to be able to say, you know, like this collagen water and stuff like that. I mean, there's not enough, or gummies. I mean, there's not enough unless maybe you're taking a melatonin gummy. There's generally not enough in a gummy that you can't put the amount in a gummy that you need to for it to actually have any clinical benefit. And so there are a lot of companies that are starting. There are some good companies starting out. I don't certainly don't want to knock people, but a lot of them are just starting as marketing tools, right? And that they are just putting in ingredients to be able to market and say that they have this ingredient without it actually being a clinically relevant amount to affect any change in your body. And so I like to say that mine are pharmaceutical grade in the sense that we put in the amount to— my entire career has been around getting people well and getting them well quickly. And so that was always my mission in my clinic, was to get you well very quickly. And then you would tell somebody else and I was I was, you know, had new patients. And so that's one of the things that I think is really important about, about my supplement line is that it actually works.

Amazing. Well, we'll be sure to share the links where you can find the products and the bundles so that you can start your healing journey. If you're working with a clinician, then you may want to introduce them to these products as well. So they're aware of them as part of your potential protocol. And if you haven't had your gut tested, this might be a good time to talk to your functional medicine practitioner if you're seeing one, or to potentially connect with, uh, Dr. Amy Myers and her team as she launches her upcoming program. So we'll, we'll be sure to share that in the show notes as well.

Thank you so much. Take care.

Bye for now.

Bye.